


No Surrender

by LuthienLuinwe



Category: DCU, Green Arrow (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alcoholism, Canon Child Death, Child Death, Depression, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief, Guilt, JayRoy Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 01:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienLuinwe/pseuds/LuthienLuinwe
Summary: Jason takes care of a grieving Roy.





	No Surrender

**Well we made a promise we swore we’d always remember: no retreat, baby no surrender.**

**Denial**

Seeing the people you looked up to all your life fall and fall hard never got any easier. And when that hero happened to be your best friend, the guy you’d do anything and then some for? Well that just made everything hundreds of thousands of times worse.

Jason had taken the first flight to Star City as soon as he’d heard the news. What kind of a friend was he that he wasn’t there when Roy needed him most?  _ He still needs you,  _ the voice in the back of his head told him as he rested his head against the horribly uncomfortable economy airline seat. 

Lian was dead.

It was surreal. She’d been so bright and happy and full of life the last time he’d seen her. And now she was gone, and it didn’t feel real.

_ Pull it together, Todd,  _ he told himself and snapped the window cover down. 

The flight was redirected to a different airport due to weather conditions, and Jason wasn’t about to sit out a nine hour layover, and so he’d hot-wired the first car he’d found and left a nice pile of cash for the poor bastard who owned it.  _ Sorry dude,  _ he thought as he got the engine started.  _ Someone needs me a hell of a lot more than you need this hunk of junk. _

The drive to Star City had been eerily quiet. No accidents, no cops looking for the stolen car, no traffic jams… Someone must have been looking out for him, looking out for them. He dumped the car a few blocks away from Roy’s apartment complex and made his way over, shivering from the rain pouring down from the sky.  _ Couldn’t have picked a place with good weather, could you, Harper? _

He stepped into the building and walked past the elevator, just as out of order as it always seemed to be, and made his way up the five flights of stairs, down the hallway with the peeling paint, and to the number Roy was behind.  _ Ollie has all the money in the world, but you don’t want his help, do you? Never did. _

He slid his key into the lock, not bothering with knocking. Jason didn’t doubt Roy was a wreck and in no position to go see who was checking up on him that time. Because isn’t that what everyone would have done throughout the past week? Check in on Roy? Give their bullshit ‘I’m sorry’s and ‘she’s in a better place’s’ that wouldn’t do Roy any damn good. No. It would only make the well-wishers feel better about themselves.

“Hey,” Jason greeted softly, in a tone one normally reserved for a scared child, a cat stuck in a tree. “It’s me.”

“Just go away,” Jason watched Roy shift and curl up on his side on the couch. He could smell the alcohol on the older man even before he saw the half-empty bottles strewn across the floor.

“It won’t bring her back, you know,” Jason sat on the edge of the couch and propped his feet up on the coffee table. “I’d ask how you’re doing, but, well…” he sighed and stared up at the ceiling.

“I still get ready to pick her up from school,” Roy said after a long moment of silence. “Still set a place for her at dinner… I just…”

“I know,” Jason sighed and rubbed circles on Roy’s back.

“I don’t know how to do this, Jason. I don’t know how to live in a world where she doesn’t exist anymore.”

**Anger**

The shock and numbness had scared Jason more than he’d admit to. The drinking was a one-time thing, Roy had said.  _ Isn’t it always?  _

The crash he heard from the bedroom sent him running into overdrive, every terrible thing he could think of running through his head. Roy had OD’d and  collapsed. Roy had finally given into his emotions and destroyed the place… 

He took a shaky breath and knocked on the bathroom door. “Roy?” he asked, using that same damned tone of voice he had when he’d shown up at the apartment two weeks earlier. “Roy?” he asked louder when he didn’t get a response.

When he still got nothing, he cracked the door open, just enough to see that Roy was okay. Well, maybe not okay. Enough to know that Roy was still with him, still there… “Just go away, Jason!” Roy snapped, and Jason flinched.

“I heard a noise,” Jason said, trying to keep his voice from shaking because Roy had  _ never  _ talked to him like that, not even when he was drinking or using. “Wanted to check on you….” he saw the red on Roy’s hand. “Shit. You’re bleeding.” He pressed the door open further and felt sick when he saw the destroyed picture frame on the floor, glass and blood distorting Lian’s school picture. “Want to talk about it?”

“I swear to  _ God  _ Jason,” Roy snapped, green eyes boring into Jason in a way that chilled him to the bone. “If one more person asks if I want to  _ talk about it  _ one more time… No. Okay? No.”

“Roy…” Jason moved closer to Roy and held his hands up when Roy jerked away from him. 

“I can’t,” Roy’s voice broke, and Jason nodded and helped him to a sitting position on the bed. “I can’t do this.”

“I know,” Jason sighed and wrapped an arm around Roy’s shoulders, pulling him close. “I know.”

**Bargaining**

“It should have been me.”

The words jerked Jason out of his thoughts. He dropped his piece of toast and glanced at Roy, sitting across from him. “What?” he blinked, not quite sure he had heard what Roy had said.

“It should have been me,” Roy repeated, and Jason took a shaky breath. 

“Roy, you couldn’t have known…”

“I was on monitors, Jason,” Roy’s voice cracked. Jason stood and poured a glass of water from the tap, setting it down in front of his best friend. “It was my job to know. It should’ve been me. I’m the adult. She was a  _ kid.  _ If I would have been there… If I would have been paying attention like I was supposed to…”

“Prometheus wanted everyone close to Ollie dead, Roy,” Jason sighed and sat back down, pulling his chair beside Roy instead of across from him like they’d been before. “If you would have been there, you’d be dead too…”

He knew he’d said the exact wrong thing as soon as he’d said it.  _ If Roy died too, he’d be with her.  _

Seeing Roy cry never got any easier, and Jason doubted it would ever get any easier. Seeing his idol completely broken, helpless… “Why wasn’t it me?”

“I don’t know, Roy,” Jason took his hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing tightly.  _ I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.  _ “But hey… Death… Death’s okay. Hell of a lot better than here. She’s happy, having the time of her life, okay? You know that puppy you said no to? She’s got like… At least ten of them to play with.”

He shut his eyes when he heard Roy sob again.  _ What did I say?  _

“Roy?”

“I should have gotten her the puppy.”

**Depression**

  
“You need to get up,” Jason shook Roy’s shoulder as he popped his neck. The couch was getting old, not that he’d complain about it. Roy needed him, and as long as Roy needed him, he wasn’t going anywhere. 

“Just go away,” Roy rolled onto his side, facing away from Jason, and pulled his blanket up over his shoulder. “I don’t gotta do anything.”

“You missed a meeting.” Jason sat on the edge of the bed. “Croc’s only gonna let you off the hook for so long.”

“Croc can go fuck himself.”

“You can’t sleep life away, Roy,” Jason lay back against the mattress and shut his eyes. “And I’m gettin’ kinda tired of cleaning this place for you.”

“Why are you still here?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why are you still here, Jason?”

Jason was silent for a minute, thinking it over. It had been months since… Everyone else had already moved on. Roy would have been reduced to the gossip chain of ‘poor Roy, can you believe it? How awful,’ by then. But Jason had stayed. “Because we’re friends.”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone else said too. And they all went home like normal people.”

“Hate to break this to you, Roytoy,” Jason glanced over at Roy, even though Roy didn’t bother turning to face him back. “We’ve never been normal.”

**Acceptance**

It was the clatter from the kitchen that woke him, rather than the first of seven alarms he had set on his phone. “Roy?” he yawned and stretched, glancing over at the kitchen, more than a bit surprised to see Roy up and about.

“Yeah?” Roy blinked and looked over at him.

“You’d better not be looking for shit you shouldn’t be looking for,” Jason stood and crossed the room, leaning against a counter.

“I’m not,” Roy held up his right hand. “I just… Wanted to do something.”

“That’s good,” Jason hopped up onto the counter, not caring that he’d just cleaned it the day before. Counters were an easy fix. Roy Harpers were a little more difficult.

“Does it ever stop hurting?” Roy asked suddenly, and Jason recoiled in surprise, swearing when he banged his head against the overhead cabinet. “Shit. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine,” Jason assured and rubbed the back of his head. “And no. It doesn’t stop hurting.It just… Hurts differently, I guess? But you have to keep going, yeah? It’s… She’d want that.”

“You swear she’s okay?” Roy asked, making eye contact that Jason didn’t dare break.

“On my second life.”

“Okay,” Roy nodded and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay.”

  



End file.
